


all moments meant to pass

by seraf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, Delusions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Biphobia, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Introspection, Mentioned Jane Prentiss, Nail Polish, Paranoia, Sasha James Lives, Season/Series 02, Trans Female Character, canon bi characterS actually!, or general unreality warnings, prompt: hardship & solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28745424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: and that’s how they ended up here. of all places. sitting at the breakroom table where she and he and tim had used to share lunches every wednesday when they’d all worked together in research, caught in lively discussions about the nuances of robert smirke’s architecture or jon’s vehement declarations of the lack of value spiders had in their world, sasha rummaging in her bag again.( he’d asked her, a little stiffly, what she meant, or how she knew, when she pulled out the blue-purple-pink color scheme for his nails, catching the drift of it when he sees her own done in shades of pink and orange. tim told me, she had said, before gently taking one of jon’s hands in her own, studying his chewed-down nails. no, jon, not because we’re conspiring together or something. he hadn’t even realized the way his eyes had narrowed minutely. i used to id as bi, you know. it was . . . a bit of a solidarity thing. even if i don’t anymore, i’m still . . . glad he did. )
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker, jonathan "jon" sims | the archivist & sasha james
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66
Collections: bi jon sims celebration





	all moments meant to pass

**Author's Note:**

> don't wanna live without teeth  
> don't wanna die without bite  
> i never wanna say that i regret it  
> never wanna say that we grew apart  
> and never wanna say that the feelings changed
> 
> i don't have the heart to match  
> the one pricked into your finger  
> of things made to be destroyed  
> all moments meant to pass
> 
> chipped nail polish  
> and a barbed-wire dress - 
> 
> s2 au. sasha isn't not!them-ed, which means some things are shifted for the better, since the not!sasha isn't causing rampant paranoia, and tim has someone to talk to. things are still bad, though. a moment alone.

it hadn’t been his idea. he hadn’t wanted anything to do with this meeting - he tries not to use the word _confrontation -_ but sasha had taken his tapes.

it had been just his luck, hadn’t it? that sasha and tessa had known each other before tessa came in to give a statement. he hadn’t _told_ tessa that him being locked out of gertrude’s computer was a matter of secrecy - he _couldn’t,_ of course, he needed to make things appear as though everything was normal, and he couldn’t do that if he acted shifty, but tessa had started chatting with sasha and - one thing had led to another, and then sasha got ahold of his supplemental tapes somehow. the ones that he’s been using to record all of his surveillance on them.

_take a break,_ she had said, entering his office and gently shutting the door behind her before turning to him. _we’re both getting out of the basement for a little bit and going to the breakroom near research. it’ll do you some good to get out of the office._

he’d already gotten a retort half bitten out, something about _not having the time for this_ or sasha interrupting him during the middle of his recording, when she’d shifted her messenger bag to rest on his desk with a _thud_ that somehow brought with it a sense of finality, pulling out one recorder and then another, and then another, until she had a small stack of them in front of her. he knows the marking he’d put on them to distinguish his personal tapes from the ones left in the archives, and he falls deathly silent for a moment as they sit between the two of them, like an unspoken accusation.

_i haven’t listened to them,_ sasha had said, finally, one hand resting on the stack of them. _and i won’t. but you need to get out of here for a little bit. we’re going to step out of the basement, and you’re going to step out of this mindset you’ve locked into yourself for just a little bit._

and that’s how they ended up here. of all places. sitting at the breakroom table where she and he and tim had used to share lunches every wednesday when they’d all worked together in research, caught in lively discussions about the nuances of robert smirke’s architecture or jon’s vehement declarations of the lack of value spiders had in their world, sasha rummaging in her bag again.

( he’d asked her, a little stiffly, what she meant, or how she knew, when she pulled out the blue-purple-pink color scheme for his nails, catching the drift of it when he sees her own done in shades of pink and orange. _tim told me,_ she had said, before gently taking one of jon’s hands in her own, studying his chewed-down nails. _no, jon, not because we’re conspiring together or something._ he hadn’t even realized the way his eyes had narrowed minutely. _i used to id as bi, you know. it was . . . a bit of a solidarity thing. even if i don’t anymore, i’m still . . . glad he did._ )

so here they sit, jon stiff as a board in a breakroom chair with a cup of tea he insisted on preparing himself so that nothing could be slipped into it cooling in front of him, sasha working her way over his hands, first with nail clippers to get rid of the ragged edges of them to make them easier to paint.

‘ jon, ‘ sasha says, gently using the clippers to get rid of another hangnail with a strange level of mastery, getting rid of even the root of the thing so it won’t be there for him to worry at with his teeth until there’s a bloody scrape around where it had been, ‘ i know what it feels like. you’re not alone, you know. ‘

his hands want to curl into defensive balls. not fists, he doesn’t . . . he’s never thrown a punch in his life. he just wants to curl into himself, tension drawing every muscle in his body taut, like rope being tugged past its limits. he tries not to snap, but it’s still there in his voice when he replies. ‘ you don’t know what - ‘

‘like you can never stop watching people out of the corner of your eye, right? you’re picking apart every single thing they say to you, the way their face moves when they look at you, the inflections of their sentences, for so long after a conversation ends that you can’t really be sure how much of it was actually what they said, and how much is your mind just . . . setting off false alarms, too sensitive to anything that might possibly be some indication of danger. like . . . like everyone around you _could_ mean you harm, but you’ve got no good way of checking, because asking outright, or looking too blatantly into it could give yourself away. it’s . . . almost suffocating, sometimes. you want to trust people that - maybe you’re friends with them, or you love them, but you _can’t_ know that they mean you no harm. ‘

jon opens and shuts his mouth with a small click of his teeth.

for a second, there’s a kernel of something like . . . shame, self-conscious and small by its nature. an emotion that _wants_ to withdraw. his voice creaks like a door that hasn’t been opened for years, when he finally replies, and he wonders if it’s his ability to _apologize_ that’s been so underutilized. maybe tim was right. ‘ yes. that’s . . . that’s exactly what it’s like. ‘ he clears his throat, unable to look at her, staring instead at the way her brush strokes remain steady. ‘ how do you . . . how do you know? ‘

she studies his face for a long moment, expression inscrutable behind her glasses, before casually shaking the wrist that isn’t holding one little brush, shuffling her shirtsleeve down her forearm a little towards her elbow, revealing a thin bracelet. it’s old enough that the colors are faded, turned pale by the sunlight and many showers, but when jon leans a little forwards carefully in his seat, he can see the pattern of blue-pink-white-pink-blue knotted out in the thread.

‘ oh. ‘ it’s let out of him like the way a bubble pops; quietly but fully, air let out of his chest. ‘ i don’t . . . i didn’t kn- ‘ and he stops short, there. did he know? he - he can’t remember. he doesn’t remember. what a thing, isn’t it? he’s been looking into where sasha went to college and where she spent her years of academia prior to this, even tracked down the a & e records for when she had begrudgingly gone to get the wound from her _michael_ looked at, but he doesn’t . . . he doesn’t remember if she’s told him that, before.

it’s funny, the things your brain finds important. the things it latches onto.

it’s quiet for a moment, enough so that he could swear he can _hear_ the sound of the brush against his nails, sasha working carefully to avoid getting it on the skin around them.

‘ i never came out to my grandmother, ‘ he admits, and even as he says it, couldn’t tell you why he’s telling this to sasha, of all people. sasha, who _could -_ who could be a murderer. even if - he can’t rule her out. this could be to lull him into a state of complacency. but his voice seems to be carrying on regardless of his spiralling thoughts, rough and low and more honest than he’s sure he feels comfortable being. ‘ it’s not. . . i don’t think she would’ve minded. i wasn’t _afraid_ of her or anything. but i just . . . ‘

he looks down at his nails, at the half-finished sheen of purple sasha’s paused halfway through painting to listen to him speak, and he can’t quite push away the feeling of old regret that bubbles in him, like stale coffee being rewarmed. so he lets it, for now.

‘ i just never told her. i don’t know why. i just felt like it had to be . . . mine. ‘ g-d, that sounds so - callous? but he doesn’t know how else to put it. the heat in his throat, low and defensive, like still-hot embers hiding behind a guise of being burned out in their white-black husks. like _knowledge_ is . . . what, a finite wellspring? like if he allows himself to give from it, he’s going to end up bereft? like it loses power if it’s kept by someone other than him?

is he even thinking about being bisexual anymore?

his mind wanders sometimes, these days. feels like it needs to race to make connections between things.

but the point stands, doesn’t it? he felt like it had to be his. like he _couldn’t_ tell her. like he lost something by doing it. even if it was only . . . even if it was only in the act of being seen. like she would’ve looked at him too differently. wrongly, in a way he couldn’t put words to even if he wanted to.

it’s similar to now, he realizes, with a low shame in his gut. how it’s just so much easier to bear tim and sasha and martin looking at him with clear suspicion, even _disgust -_ because that’s . . . what he expects from them.

he swallows, adam’s apple dipping in his throat as though it’s trying to keep the sides of his windpipe from closing in on itself at the sudden sting that burns in his eyes, prickling behind his nose. christ, did he _want_ them to be suspicious of him? was it some kind of . . . vindication, in some horrid little part of him? was it just . . . was it just _easier,_ if they looked at him like he was an enemy, because then it was that much easier to rationalize to himself that _they_ were?

sasha is looking at him now, and her eyes, the same brown as dark leather, brown to the point where they could almost be called black, aren’t filled with . . . malice or suspicion or even impatience, as her brush hangs over the little bottle of deep pink nail polish, seemingly waiting for his train of thought to come into station. just filled with a quiet . . . g-d help him, he’s not sure where the difference falls between _pity_ and _empathy_ and _understanding._ he just knows enough to be able to push down the way his hackles raise against it instinctively.

‘ i . . . well, to me it’s always been another side of coming out, ‘ sasha says, picking up the deep royal blue bottle and unscrewing it. ‘ does that make sense? they already think of me as a woman, but if i tell them i wasn’t - you know, born one, they might question that. so . . . so i end up finding myself trying just a little too hard sometimes, or picking apart peoples’ statements, because they’re making them with the assumption that i’m straight, or that i’m cis. ‘

jon nods blindly, looking down at the table. that much, at least, he understands. he’s very . . . he doesn’t like to share. he said that much already. he just _doesn’t._ but that in combination with how scholarly and upright he tends to be, means no one ever really thinks _he_ could be bisexual. it’s something he’d discussed quietly with tim, once, in research. tim being open and sociable and easy to talk to, falling into conversation with people regardless of their gender, meant people just weren’t _surprised_ when it came to him. which of course leads to its own wealth of problems.

but jon is - jon is . . . no. no, they never think it of him to begin with.

he opens his mouth to tell sasha some of this, before shutting it again, trying to piece together what the _meaning_ of this is. what she’s trying to gain from this conversation. trying to think _but maybe she just wants to talk_ is met with scorn from the rest of his brain - like saying _it was just the wind_ in a horror movie.

it feels like an active fight, trying to push away the paranoia with rationality. paranoia loves to go hand-in-hand _with_ rationality. finding explanations for every little incongruency, making everything line up neatly in spiralling patterns of conspiracy. it feels like trying to fight the sea. he’s _aware,_ suddenly, of how much tension he’s carrying in his shoulders, and they slump all at once, elbows thudding against the table quietly. his fingers try to compensate for the way the tension lets out of that part of him, trying to riot against the gentle weight of sasha’s hand by curling into a fist.

g-d, it feels like a fight he’s _losing._

‘ hey. jon. stay with me, ‘ sasha says gently, and takes his hand in both of hers, squeezing it between her own as he works to catch his breath, feeling like trying to bring air in and out of his lungs is like trying to inflate a torn balloon, never _quite_ being able to gulp down enough oxygen.

but it’s anchoring. the weight of her hand, the acrid smell of the nail polish, the way his eyes drift to focus on the threadbare bracelet on her wrist. the colors he now realizes are streaked across both their hands, in blue-purple-pink, as his breath slowly settles in his chest, like a prey animal finally lowering its head again to eat.

‘ sorry, ‘ he says, with a tight little laugh, a rusty door shaking on its hinges for how infrequently its been opened. ‘ i . . . i got it everywhere, didn’t i? ‘ his nails, that she had just done so carefully, are now a mess of smeared paint.

she takes his hand in hers again, picking up a napkin from the breakroom table and pouring nail polish remover into it, carefully beginning to scrub away at the stains on his skin. ‘ it’s alright, ‘ she says, voice bright, but in a quiet kind of way. ‘ we’ve got all the time in the world. ‘

jon plants his feet on the floor and takes a deep breath, lets his eyes shut for a moment, and tries to get the tapestatic ringing of his ears out of his head. he offers a little shaky smile in return, even if he’s not opening his eyes just yet. ‘ i . . . yes, i suppose we do, ‘ he murmurs.

* * *

accompanying art [here](https://transmikecrew.tumblr.com/post/640044178815025152/a-drawing-for-solidarity-week-for-jonsimsbipride)!

**Author's Note:**

> for jonsimsbipride prompts - both solidarity and hardship.


End file.
